All You Want
by Atheniandream
Summary: She's seen only what she was meant to see...


Title: All you want  
  
Author: Athena.   
  
Email: atheniandream@aol.com  
  
Content Warnings: Drama, some POV, Angst, Rom.  
  
Pairings: S/J  
  
Spoilers: GRACE, and gen. Notes up until then.  
  
Season: Seven  
  
Rating: PG13 just to be OVER safe. He he  
  
Summary: She's seen only what she was meant to see...  
  
Author's notes: Its beta'd!!! Several times...Thank you Starprops.  
  
Archive: Anywhere. I'm my own publicist.   
  
Disclaimer: I OWN NOTHING. I know this. God-dammit ;)  
  
-------------------------------------------  
  
All you want  
  
This is my 71st SGFic!! That either means, I write too much...or I just write too much ;)  
  
Thanks to those few guys who have stuck by my fic, through thick, thin and thinner... ;)  
  
------------------------  
  
All you want,  
  
Is right here in this room,  
  
All you want,  
  
And all you need is sitting here with you... ~~~ 'All you want' By Dido, Album 'No Angel'   
  
-------------------------  
  
The scene in front of her paused.  
  
"So, you're telling me, this is what I want?" Frowning deeply, Sam rubbed intensively at her forehead, as if she wanted to think that what she was seeing wasn't real. Even questioning those words in her mind, they still seemed to resonate her same frustrations.  
  
Was it real? And *why* was it real...?  
  
The rational part of her mind didn't want to risk the notion. After all, she'd prided herself on the qualities she'd inherited, over the years her knack to sense the barrier between reality and the 'un-real', her justifiable belief of self and just simple conscious awareness of everything around her.  
  
But all of it froze, like clear blue ice around her brain; leaving her to feel everything, sense nothing, and believe even less.  
  
She turned back to the frozen figures before her, studying their features, and feeling unjustly nervous at the thought-it *was* them. Not copies, not clones, not former representatives of her and Colo-Jack. Her and Jack. It *was* them, and it hurt to see it in such a distinct and Technicolor way.  
  
Her lips, frozen at the point of engulfing his, her eyes lidded beneath an agonising frown, curving into his frame where he'd pushed her into him with the force of his hands.  
  
Her hands, had been searching, discovering strands of his hair at the time, obviously weak, by the way they just hung against his head, reaping the pleasure that he must have sought...  
  
All of it, the whole damn picture was making her body churn in a most un-nauseating fashion.  
  
She was looking at herself, at the most innocent point in her life. Powerless, innocent and all at the same time her mind had been pebble-dashed, mixed with emotion and she still had nothing that could define it all.   
  
Still, she wanted to touch them, see if they were real, malleable, like her...  
  
Or was the scenario just a figurative explanation for a badly timed crush?  
  
Her eyes drifted out of her thoughts for a moment.  
  
"I don't know that this is how I really feel..." The doubt in her mind grew. She looked at the girl opposite for more.   
  
"Maybe you should find out?"   
  
Through the time of a second, everything around her changed, and she was no longer cold or anxious, but warm, and tingling underneath a great heat that was leaning towards her.  
  
Her eyes were...shut.  
  
Her pulse was...fast.  
  
Her heart...stopped.  
  
Then she caught back the feeling in her lips, and then aware of another pair against them, cool, oddly soft lips pressing against the smoother flesh of hers, accompanied with his tongue, which she felt course over her front teeth and then further.  
  
It left her with no thought process, other than what existed between them, something which was being hastily drafted out by her own awareness of his hands, and then the short tickling strands of his hair against her fingertips, and the slight stubble rising on his chin. All of it intoxicating her, second by second, as the whole scenario came to light.  
  
How could she have denied this? She was after all just human, and a woman, who was fully attracted to a man. Feelings aside, why do this? Why write out a rule that denies people companionship and sexual interaction, for what? The safe guard against getting too close, against feeling more than one should for another person.   
  
But really, she knew all too well.   
  
Allowing this was like accepting failure.   
  
Failure to just get on with her damn job and accept that it was against the rules.  
  
Well, they in her hasty opinion (The Air Force) had completely no comprehension for simple attraction...  
  
Was it purely attraction? Did she know? Did she care?  
  
Yes. You bet your ass she cared. She cared about it more than she was allowed to. One big cliché, dripping like runny eggs off of the next willing recipient.  
  
She'd talked with Janet in the past.  
  
Not always about her, or Colonel, but more about accepting fate, and how the future could be planted out in front of her, and all she had to do was follow that cookie trail that had been cunningly left.  
  
But the signs were all pointed at him, weren't they.  
  
Alternate universes, attraction, failed lovers, failed 'potential' lovers, all paved the way about a mile in front of her; accept the traffic light said 'red' and their was a wall barring the way. With a flipping big 'Goa'ould-sized' evil grin on it's face.  
  
And second as quick as it arrived, had fled....  
  
Angrily shaking from her ordeal, Sam found herself back with the three-dimensional image and *that* ...girl. "Why do that?" she shouted. "Why show me something that I can't have?"   
  
The first thought after that was that she immediately missed his lips. Dammit.  
  
"To show you the severity of your choices, Sam. You know what I know, but you wont' let yourself admit it. Do you seriously think you can be happy with anyone else?" The girl looked at her plain and simple of expression.  
  
"I don't know. Maybe if I looked for it, then yes. But I can't right now I have a duty..."  
  
Yes. She had a duty. To the world and to her job, to General Hammond and his Grandchildren, to Janet, to Cassie, to the remains of Tealc's family, and everyone lost, earth-bound r alien.  
  
Heck she'd had a duty to freedom, anything.  
  
She just had a duty.  
  
"To this man?" She pointed again at the figure of Jack O'Neill.   
  
"You don't understand," She pressed. "There are rules..."  
  
"Rules, are just a guideline for those not willing to cross. This is merely a hurdle for you to overcome, Sam. Only when you overcome this will you be happy. You can either face it, or walk away."  
  
She had to walk away. There was no choice available.  
  
She had too options, either 'The Major' could stand it out and ride the wave, maybe achieve some level of definable plutonic relationship with one Jack O'Neill where by she didn't have to emit feelings to the equation.   
  
Or, Carter could do what the Colonel did on a daily basis, and soak herself in ignorance and denial, ploughing on like the good old, boringly tough Solider she should be.   
  
And then there was Sam.  
  
She could accept everything.  
  
Everything she'd ever wanted; dreamed and hoped for the future, accept right now:  
  
There was no way out of it. So she'd have to walk away.  
  
"I have no choice."  
  
Walk away...  
  
"I have to go now, Sam."  
  
"I have *no* choice."  
  
Walk away...  
  
"Sam, remember how it felt..."  
  
I have no choice, She told herself. I can't...I have no choice. Just walk away.  
  
"Grace?"  
  
The girl had vanished.  
  
*****************************  
  
Shaking, she immediately regained consciousness. She slowly opened her eyes, finding herself in scarily familiar arms...  
  
"Carter?" He whispered, two blackening eyes blinking down at her. "You okay?"  
  
"Sir?" She blinked back.  
  
Suddenly a wave of panic turned to remorse and Sam immediately leapt to her feet,  
  
Before her head woke to find nothing but discomfort and aw-agony.   
  
"I'm fine." She swallowed. Her face wasn't for the grit in her teeth so much as the (welcomingly) mind numbing pain throbbing in her conscious and disarming her unconscious.   
  
"I'm fine." She said again.  
  
But judging by the wild 'deer' look in her eyes and the clenched jaw, he knew that she clearly wasn't.  
  
"Are you okay?" He asked, flicking the switch on his radio. "Are you seeing spots?" He asked.  
  
"One on your Chin," she quipped almost too sarcastically for 'Carter'. "Apart from that, no. Just this uh...pain. I hit my head."   
  
Finding herself worried that it had been so easy to forget about the 'grace' issue that had scored her mind since she'd been unconscious, she immediately ignored the thought to balance herself onto one elbow.  
  
"I know you hit your head Carter. I almost had a heart attack when I saw the blood on the floor. What the hell happened?"  
  
"You were worried?" Side-stepping half of his comment, she found it hard, focusing through partially open eyes, although the pain in her head was refusing to dull.   
  
"Uh, just a little." He lied, wincing a little and then changing the subject. "The ship came out of orbit by the way. We were able to find you. Floating' around P2C-...uh 455."  
  
"Oh, that close huh?"  
  
"Want some help?" He didn't wait for some lame excuse of an answer and one shoulder and under her arm in order to sit her up enough to a least drag her to the nearest wall so she could lean and be more...vertical. She used both her arms against his, fearing in her own 30-something paranoia that although he was strong, he might not be strong enough to lift her.   
  
"Thanks. " They finally came to a stand still against the uncomfortable wall, as he sat beside her she couldn't stop feeling like they'd done this before... and one more than one other occasion.  
  
"You're head still hurt?" He asked her, seeing how her head was lolling to one side, and she was panting slightly. He tried not to look over interested or...aroused. It was the panting.  
  
"No."  
  
"Liar." He lifted his hand to the edge of her chin to gently bring her head towards his shoulder, as her forehead landed peacefully on the edge of his collarbone, hair brushed it slightly, and he fought to shiver.   
  
"That better?" he asked quietly, remembering the last migraine that he had, had taken him as a day-old hostage and hadn't given up for a whole week-and with the aid of medication.  
  
She didn't answer for a while, forgetting that she was steadily steeping in the side of his arm with no objection whatsoever from him, and almost losing herself in the pain that seemed to echo like a wave and radiate out from both them.   
  
"All I want." She mumbled.  
  
"What?" He wasn't listening and therefore hadn't heard her.  
  
"All I want..." she repeated.  
  
And then out of the blue, (she hadn't expected him to react) he replied. "Me too."  
  
He didn't know what was wrong with her, and he never pretended to know why. But he may as well put his lid on her open-boxed, supposed doubled-edged meaning. And call a handle to a spade, so to speak. After all there were seldom times that she was allowed to say what he wanted, whether he wanted to or not.  
  
And he was playing by the handbook that said: Only admit feelings in the following circumstances:   
  
1. Death of a friend.   
  
2. Capture by the enemy.  
  
3. Hallucination  
  
4. Amnesia  
  
5. And severe or not so severe cranial injury caused by Prometheus-type malfunctions upon missions where interact saves lives.  
  
See, he was following the rules...  
  
She felt his hand cup her head for a second, before feeling it fall back down to his side. And then the clicking of a radio...she closed her eyes again.  
  
"Anyone there?"  
  
  
  
"Teal'c, Daniel, come in...."  
  
"Jack, Teal'c and I are in the control room."   
  
"Carter's safe. We're havin' a sit down."  
  
"Why?"  
  
"My knees hurt...." That had to be one of the most obvious lies, but he knew that if he'd said 'Carter may have concussion', then as per 'Space Monkey' usual, he'd have run along the halls, seen her and gotten 'squinky' about it.  
  
And as a matter of fact, she felt really good against his side.  
  
His side was very impressed...   
  
However Sam, who was fading in and out of consciousness, wanted to say something else, maybe give meaning to his obvious anxiety towards her right now.  
  
She wanted to explain everything that had gone on.  
  
Grace, the kiss, her thoughts, her anxieties, why she felt so god damn ill, the reason for the glitch in hyperspace, her 'newer wormhole theory'...  
  
But all she could think of, was how his lips felt,  
  
How he made hers melt,  
  
And how she knew he felt...  
  
-----------  
  
It's never the end if you don't' give up pretending that your troubles will just fly away...  
  
-------------  
  
Actually, the end scene matched the lyrics, not the other way around. I didn't even realise until I added the lyrics at the last minute. Yay me...lol  
  
Athena 


End file.
